a) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to buffering technologies, and more particularly to buffering technologies for buffering data received over a communications network.
b) Description of the Related Art
As a standard specification for communications between electronic musical instruments, a music instrumental digital interface (MIDI) specification is known. Electronic musical instruments equipped with interfaces of the MIDI specification can communicate with each other by transferring MIDI data via a MIDI cable.
For example, an electronic musical instrument transmits MIDI data of a musical performance by a player, and another musical instrument receives it to reproduce it. As one electronic musical instrument is played, another electronic musical instrument can be played in real time. However, in communications of reproducing sounds with high fidelity in real time without any delay time, the amount of communications data per unit time becomes large and a communications delay is likely to occur.
In a communications network interconnecting a plurality of general computers, various types of data are transferred. For example, live musical tone data or other MIDI data can be transmitted from one computer, which once stored the data in its storage device such as a hard disk, via the communications network to another computer which stores the received data in its storage device. Although long distance communications becomes possible via a communications network, a communications delay is likely to occur during long distance communications.
A communications delay is likely to occur during real time communications and long distance communications. This communications delay makes it difficult to smoothly process data at a reception side. For example, the receiver is difficult to smoothly reproduce MIDI data in real time.